James Dodd takes first HSCC Super Touring Championship pole
James Dodd will start the opening round of the 2014 HSCC Super Touring Car Championship from pole position following a brisk qualifying session.
Under the sun at Thruxton, double 2013 Gold Cup winner Dodd took his Honda Accord to the top of the time sheets with a time of 1:18.480 seconds, snatching the top spot away from Patrick Watts’ Peugeot 406 by six tenths of a second.
“The car felt good,” Dodd told TouringCarTimes. “The track felt a lot better this morning than it did in testing yesterday, despite the cooler weather. I’m confident we can continue the form we showed at Oulton [Gold Cup, 2013] as long as the car holds together. We didn’t really do any testing over the winter, I think we’ve run about 10 laps since Oulton. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.”
The Ford Sierra RS500 of Craig Davies set the early pace, but as the session progressed the Super Tourers came in to their own. John Cleland was the first of the Super Touring drivers to top the times, consistently lapping at the top end of the field in his 1997 Vauxhall Vectra.
With just five minutes remaining in the session it appeared to be heading towards a Watts and Cleland front row, before a late flurry of times saw Dodd, Paul Smith’s BMW 320 and 2013 race winner Stewart Whyte spoil the party.
The fastest of the non-ST1 class entries was Max Goff in the 1991 BMW M3, taking tenth place away from the early pace-setter, Davies.
